newbie question - too many objects on my land

Hi All,
i'm VERY new to building, so i assume my question is very basic and pretty much... well... stupid, but i just cant figure it out.

i see a lot of nice (and complex) buildings and structures around, but when i i try to build something on my (small and sweat) land, i quickly get to the point where i get some error message about having "too much objects" on my parcel - what is this ? what does it mean? when i look at my land properties, i can see i can put about 100 "objects" on my land, but that doesn't seem logical since a lot of the structure i see MUST be built from more than 100 objects !!! can someone please point me to where i can read and understand how to build structures ?

many thanks
Omni

It sounds like you've got a 512 square meter parcel. If that's the case, then you only get 117 prims. If you want more, get more land. That's the only answer.

The way it works is each simulator (region) supports 15,000 prims. A sim is 256x256, or 65,536 square meters, which means your 512 meter plot is 1/128 of the full sim. Since you've got 1/128 of the land, you also get 1/128 of the prims. 15,000 / 128 is 117. Get it?

By the way, a good thing to know is that if you do get more land in the same sim, it does not need to be touching your first parcel in order to add to the prim count. For example, if you get another 512 square meters, you'll have a total of 234 prims to play with. You could put all 234 on one parcel and 0 on the other, or put 117 on each, or otherwise divide them any way you want. As long as all the land is in the same sim, you divvy up the prims however you see fit.


For those structures that you believe are using tons of prims, either their owners have a lot more land than you do in the sim, or they're just much better at getting the most out of a limited number of prims than you are. Given that you're new, the answer is most likely both.

Success in SL is all about learning to do more with less. For example, to make a corner, instead of using two cubes for two walls, use a single cube, hollowed and cut in half to form an L shape. Instead of adding prims when you want to increase detail, use a more detailed texture on a single prim to fake the same effect. Instead of using a whole cube for every step of a staircase, cut the prim count in half by using a hollowed & cut cube to form two steps at a time. Etc., etc., etc. There are hundreds of little tricks like that. You'll pick them up as you go.

And that's all before even getting into sculpt prims, which open up a whole new world of possibilites. The prim savings from good use of sculpties can be enormous.

A lot of the plots you're looking at are part of a larger property... it's just scattered. So one person may have more than 117 prims on a 512. They have a "prim bank" elsewhere in the sim.

Also, many things that look like several prims are in fact one prim - either through texturing, sculpted prims, or cut/hollowed prims.

Hope that helps.

FYI, I built a rather nice 3 story cottage with full prim stairs for under 70 prims, so it can be done.

Also bear in mind that an object is different than a prim. A prim, or primitive shape is a basic building block, where an object is (or at least can be and ususally is) more than one prim linked together into a set. If you look in the general tab of edit, it will tell you how many prims a paticular object has. Also, if you own multiple parcels in the sim, you can rez your entire prim usage on any of the parcels.